The CineFix Top 100

(Note: Since this episode was recorded on location, it is audio-only.) We're hanging out in the snow at Park City, for the 40th edition of the Sundance Film Festival this week, and got a chance to see 2014 festival alum The Babadook on the big screen—and wouldn't you know it, it happens to be on the CineFix Top 100! A terrifying entry into the psychological horror genre, writer director Jennifer Kent gives us the story of a woman and her son, struggling to keep their sanity in the midst of grief, trauma and a haunted pop up book! Clint, Cal, and Alex dig into the brilliantly efficient opening 2 minutes, a borrowed sound effect from World of Warcraft, and how The Babadook is a deserving spiritual successor to Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick and The Shining.

Season 2's "community" theme kicks off with the patriarch of modern action cinema, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. An epic story of samurai helping a small village community defend itself against raiders, Seven Samurai puts its characters front and center, and is a masterclass on how to earn a three hour runtime. Clint, Cal, and Alex break down its place in film history as a foundational text on action cinema, the nuts-and-bolts brilliance of staging and shooting the moving and panning shots that keep everything in focus, and the physical and mental toll the film took on those both in front of, and behind, the camera.

Our community season continues with the movie that added "infamous" and "plethora" to our vocabulary, the Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short classic: Three Amigos. Directed by John Landis, whose filmography up to this point is littered with hits, Amigos succeeds by continually making its leads the butt of the joke. Clint, Cal, and Alex discuss the difficulty of analyzing comedies, whether or not Three Amigos qualifies as a spoof or an homage, how the film's comedy is completely character based and how hard it is to be grounded after being so absurd. For the first time, in this community season, we also discuss whether or not Three Amigos belongs on the list and if it should be struck.

We head to a galaxy far, far away, to discuss a little space opera that changed the way we make movies, talk about movies, and build franchises out of those movies. George Lucas' Star Wars stormed onto the scene in 1977, and was relentlessly retconned as they moved to franchise the biggest original IP of all time. Star Wars is inescapable now, but Clint, Cal, and Alex try to dissect the movie it was, while also keeping in mind all the tinkering, changes, sequels, and spinoffs that have followed. How do you talk about a movie that has been discussed, analyzed, and iterated on for nearly fifty years? As a film that has bled into every part of our subconscious, right down to the sound design, is it possible that this doesn’t crack the top 10?

Season 2 continues with a bit of a milestone Disney film, as both the first movie to be developed after Walt's death, and the first to be released on VHS: Disney's Robin Hood. How much has nostalgia played into its placement on the list? Clint, Cal, and Alex are here to break it all down, digging into the incredible pedigree behind the film, including Don Bluth, who went on to create such classics as An American Tale and The Land Before Time, and one of Disney's "Nine Old Men", Director Wolfgang Reitherman, whose previous credits include such heavy hitters as The Jungle Book, 101 Dalmatians, Sleeping Beauty, and more. Does this film stack up to all those other classics? Did it start the furry movement? More importantly—does it belong on the list?

Our community season continues with one of the funniest movies of all time, and our first newly minted Top 100: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A gleeful skewering of the filmmaking process by first time filmmakers, The Holy Grail crams in a musical number, an animated god, and a record scratch of an ending that breaks the fourth wall in the same way Blazing Saddles did. Clint, Cal, and Alex discuss the movie being impossible to turn off, its place as a foundational post-modernist comedy, and how budget constraints changed the ending and invented the term "cop-out". Who made the mistake of not including this brilliant comedy on their list?

Bring your hot takes somewhere else, Rear Window is S-Tier Hitchcock. Made and released between other Grace Kelly classics Dial M for Murder, and To Catch a Thief, Rear Window's strength lies in Hitchcock's ability to make us willing accomplices in Jimmy Stewart's spying on his neighbors, by leaning so hard on his POV and ratcheting up the tension of being stuck in one place. Clint, Cal, and Alex dive into how such a simple set up becomes so complicated to shoot, the technical precision it takes to shoot everything from one vantage point on a giant set, and why Jeff absolutely sucks without ruining the movie. Will it end up being the highest Hitchcock film on the list?

Joe Dante's first collaboration with Tom Hanks started as a send-up of Rear Window, before it morphed into a genre-bending, dark comedy in The 'Burbs. Coming after Joe Dante's Academy Award winning Innerspace, and Tom Hank's first Best Actor nomination for Big, The 'Burbs is something of an '80s curio. Clint, Cal, and Alex dive into the universality of neighborhood paranoia and how it manifests in a dream sequence, textbook blocking for exposition scenes, and visual jokes that work on multiple levels. Who among us hasn't looked at our neighbors and assumed the worst?

From director Hal Ashby, Being There is a wildly intelligent movie about an incredibly unintelligent man. Peter Sellers stars with Shirley MacLaine in a story about a simple-minded gardener, and the power brokers who seem to think he's a genius. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about the power of projecting only what we want to see, how films can become eternally relevant, and who has the bigger fan base: the Chicago Bears or the film While You Were Sleeping.

Hayao Miyazaki dropped one of his several masterpieces in 1997 with Princess Mononoke. Depicting the battle between Iron Town and ancient Gods of the forest, the film is a gorgeously animated adventure that paints its themes vividly, front and center. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about where it fits in Miyazaki's body of work, how James Cameron being a fan makes them feel about the movie, samurai swords in the mail, and whether or not Prince Ashitaka has enough rizz to carry the movie.

Hot Fuzz, the second chapter in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s ‘Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy’, takes the piss out of buddy cop movies in the most loving way possible. The story of a cop who's too good for his own good, transferring to a small town in the country and uncovering a gruesomely violent plot, lampoons its action influences while being a pristine example of the genre in its own right. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about editing paperwork like a fight scene, the comedy chops of Olivia Colman, and audio commentary tracks with film references too numerous to keep up with.

On one hand, La Haine is a grab-bag of every filmmaking trick that was cool in the ’90s. On the other hand, it's a scathing look at systemic violence that's as relevant as ever even 30 years later. The story of three guys outside of Paris grappling with the aftermath of a riot in which police officers put one of their friends in a coma, La Haine is a tough but essential watch. Clint, Cal, and Alex discuss how great the black and white looks, the early days of drone photography, and how the film never lets you forget that these guys are just kids trying to get through their day.

The Warriors dropped in 1979, during an age of New York City that was about to change. Walter Hill's film about a gang being hunted across the city as they try to make it home is a portrait of the politics of gang society. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about '70s fight scene choreography, expert camera blocking, and just how many guys it takes to be wearing vests with no shirt, before you start to look cool.

Jaws was legitimate phenomenon in the ’70s, launching both the career of Steven Spielberg and the concept of the summer blockbuster to the forefront of the Hollywood system. For this story about an island being terrorized by a rogue Great White, Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw as maybe the best ever top 3 in a cast, how to dress like a proper island Mayor, and why Bruce the shark not working correctly might just be the most fortuitous mistake in cinema history.

Boogie Nights was only Paul Thomas Anderson's second film, but the story of an up-and-coming star in the waning days of the porn industry on film is exceedingly confident, especially for a director in his 20s. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about the stacked cast that might be the best ensemble ever assembled, the origin of the most hilarious sub-genre (the "horny boy movie"), and why this movie about sex is not about sex at all.

Le Samouraï popped up in the French New Wave and gave us the definitive image of the "cool Hit Man" that endures to this day, and so it only made sense that Clint, Cal, and Alex welcome special guest, and co-writer and director of ‘Hit Man’, Richard Linklater! The Academy Award nominated filmmaker chats about why people think retail hitmen actually exist, how Le Samouraï helped influence that belief, and why the rest of the French New Wave looked up to Jean Pierre Melville and his incredible nom-de-guerre from the French Revolution. It's a super fun, super special in-between season installment of the CineFix Top 100, and we hope you have a good time with it!